Getting Started with ANGEL

ANGEL is the Course Management System used at Penn
State. By using ANGEL, you can provide resources to your students
electronically, contact students who are enrolled in your courses, and
manage your grading with the gradebook tool. You can also develop fully
online activities and courses by using ANGEL. It is a powerful accompaniment
to your teaching tool belt, allowing you to design activities, communicate
more effectively with students, and manage your assessment plan.

To get started with ANGEL, attend a workshop (offered
several times a year as needed), request one-on-one assistance (scs15@psu.edu)
, or use these valuable handouts to dive in and get started!

Using Technology to Incorporate the Seven
Principles of Good Practice

Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson conducted extensive
research to compile a list of the seven principles that define good teaching
practice in higher education. The seven principles state that good
practice:

Encourages contact between students and faculty

Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students

Uses active learning techniques

Gives prompt feedback.

Emphasizes time on task

Communicates high expectations

Respects diverse talents and ways of knowing

Chickering later extended his findings to include the
integration of technology into these seven principles in an article
entitled,
Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. (Association of
Higher Education. Retrieved June 8, 2006). The article addresses the ways in
which technology can support the integration of the seven principles into
your teaching practice. It is well worth the read. ANGEL tools make it easy
to incorporate the use of technology into your classes. Another great
resource on the seven principles is available including ideas for
implementation (written by Dr. Patti Bartlett at Montgomery College's Center
for Teaching and Learning) on the web. Read a short
synopsis.

Why is technology integration important? (excerpted in part from an article by the George Lucas Foundation.
Retrieved on August 18, 2008 at http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-introduction ) What makes technology use successful? First and
foremost, it should serve the attainment of your course objectives. Using
technology just for the sake of using a new tool is meaningless, if it
doesn't support your learning goals for your students.

A useful guiding
principle: Don't mistake the USE of technology with the INTEGRATION of
technology.

1. It is part of our students' lives and can be a
powerful motivator when it engages students in classroom activities

2. Technology use (when well-planned) can reinforce the
development of workplace skills students need when they graduate:

• Planning, critical thinking, reasoning, and
creativity
• Strong communication skills, both for interpersonal and presentation needs
• Cross-cultural understanding
• Visualizing and decision-making
• Knowing how and when to use technology and choosing the most appropriate
tool for the task

3. Technology use can help build the faculty/student
relationship

4. There is a growing body of evidence that reports
that technology integration positively effects academic achievement by:
engaging students in learning, promoting teamwork skills, priding frequent
and meaningful feedback, and providing access to real-world situations and
experts. Read more about
technology integration and the research on its
effects on academic achievement.

Using the Internet in Instruction

The Internet can significantly expand the resources
you provide to your students, bring the real world into your classroom,
improve student motivation by incorporating relevant and timely topics,
connect your classroom to a global perspective, provide tools to create
projects, build knowledge, and community in and outside the class, and
provide access to materials and resources 24/7. With all this to enrich
the classroom experience, who wouldn't want to tap into the resources!
With this said, it is also important to remember to tie whatever you are
doing with technology to your course and lesson objectives. If the
Internet activity you have planned doesn't support their attainment,
then its use is questionable.To give us a framework for integration, let's think
about some of the ways we and our students may currently use the
Internet: as consumers, creators, and participants. Keep in mind that
when designing class activities, get your students involved. It doesn't
have to be all you. Let them provide the resources, create projects, and
build opportunities to connect to the outside world!

Creators We use the Internet to get information, but
sometimes we want to use the tools there to create things as well.

E-portfolio sites allow your students to
compile samples of their work into a visual space that can be shared
around the world. Penn State provides this service for faculty,
students, and staff
HERE.

iPods/podcasting are the hot topic these
days. According to Wikipedia, the word podcast is a compound word
combining "iPod" and "broadcast". Podcasts provide a way to make
multi-media files such as audio, music, or video readily available
through mobile devices such as iPods or on the Internet through iTunes
or other mp3 (compressed audio file) players. Many news organizations,
such as CNN, provide podcasts of news reports that may have relevance
for classroom use. Penn State is developing resources on podcasting at
its site,
http://podcasts.psu.edu.The portability of podcasts makes them highly
attractive for educational applications. Students can download podcasted
lectures (or other podcasts relevant to course content) onto portable
players and listen at their convenience, catching up with new material,
or reviewing previously studied topics. Duke University was the
frontrunner in implementing podcasting for educational purposes. In a
2004 report on academic uses of podcasting at Duke, five broad
categories are named: course content dissemination, classroom recording,
field recording, study support, and file storage and transfer. For more
information, read Duke's 2004 report on their results (http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf).Get the free download (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)
of iTunes to listen to podcasts on your computer. After you install
iTunes, try it out by listening to an NPR podcast from several programs http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php.
The link provides instructions and help on how to use iTunes if needed.
The site, Audacity, provides a free audio recording
application which allows you to record and edit audio clips from a microphone at
your PC.

Websites can be a powerful way for students
to display their academic work. Most students have the Microsoft Office
package which includes FrontPage software. This is a software that
allows you to create web pages. Students, faculty, and staff can also
get web space at PSU to upload the finished websites. Link to
handouts how to
upload web pages into PSU personal web space are available. A
complete list of
PSU web FAQs is also available.

Collaborators -
Community Building - Social ComputingOnce we've found some interesting websites,
reflected on a learning event, or created a new website or other online
resource, we often want to share what we've discovered with others!
Social computing is the new term to describe the kinds of things we do
with computing that connect us to others, and help us to build new
knowledge.... Blogs, wikis, online meetings and conferences, survey
tools, instant messaging, and e-mail are just some of the ways, old and
new, that we connect to each other and share ideas and resources. Read
an
Educause Quarterly article with an overview of these tools.

Blog, a shortened form of "web log", is a
web space that allows comments on particular topics from anyone with an
Internet connection and access to the blog web address. Blogs came to
national attention during the 2004 presidential election. Various
interest groups began to connect and discuss the issues of the day and
their comments actually made their way into the mainstream media. Today,
blogs are regular features on most major news websites - New
York Times and
NPR to name a few. They provide a way for people to connect with
others and discuss topics of interest from a multitude of viewpoints. Twitter is a microblog with 140 characterl imit per posting. Get your own PSU Blog at http://blogs.psu.edu/

Wikis - According to Wikipedia (one of the
most famous wikis!), a wiki is "a type of website that allows users to
add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and
easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of
interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for
collaboration." In educational settings, wikis can be used for knowledge
building activities. For example, at Penn State York, a wiki was
designed to gather resources and input around the topic of learning
communities.
Visit the site to see what a wiki looks like. Notice there is an
area for resources as well as discussion and sharing. Because users have
the ability to change the contents of the website, registration (or
invitation) is often required to participate in some wikis. If you are
interested in entering the learning community wiki to get a feel for how
they work,
contact me for access. Carnegie Mellon also has a very useful
collaboration tool that is available to the education public for
free called the
KeepToolKit

Online Meetings - Adobe's Breeze Meeting
provides a way for people in remote locations to gather via the Internet
to hold their meetings. Tools allow participants to see, hear, and chat
with each other using video conferencing capability, as well as
providing the capability to share files, project PowerPoint
presentations, and collaborate using whiteboard spaces, shared weblinks,
and polling access. PSU is currently gathering
resources for faculty use and negotiating the availability of this
useful product for PSU faculty and staff.

Social Networks -
Facebook.com
and
MySpace.com
are two online social directories that students, faculty,
and staff can join to meet people and share information. Currently,
Facebook has over 7 million users. A recent poll found that almost 80%
of all college students have a profile in Facebook, spending an average
of 20 minutes a day using the site. Anyone with a valid school, college,
or work e-mail account can join and link to other individuals or groups
with similar interests. For example, a Penn State student group exists
currently in Facebook with over 1,162 current discussion board postings
by PSU students! Students go there to sell books, talk about current
events, meet others, and just to congregate!
Listen to Danah Boyd's Keynote address at the 2009 TLT Symposium about living and learning with social media.

The widespread use of these social directories
shows the extent to which current students are connected online!
Understanding this about our students can help us to design class
activities that meet your objectives but also incorporate the social
aspects of contemporary students, building motivation and interest into
what we are doing in the classroom.